house, with interior walls of "soft finish," a local term, in contradistinction to plastering of "hard finish," and signifying only curtains of white muslin for partitions. They compel guests who don't wish to give magic-lantern exhibitions, to extinguish their candles before disrobing; but afford rarest facilities for general conversation after every one has gone to bed.

Hutchings and his family regaled us on the fat of the land and the fruit of the water-sweet milk and savoury trout. In winter the sun rises upon them at one o'clock P.M., and sets two hours later. Then they receive mails and news from the outside world once a week, through adventurous Indians, who cross the dangerous mountain snows, twenty feet deep, to Coulterville or Mariposa.

In front of Hutchings', runs the Merced fresh from the Sierras. Delightful and exhilarating, though a little chilly for the summer, it is so perfectly transparent as to cheat the eye, and beguile beyond his depth any one attempting to wade it. Crossing it by a rustic log bridge, we are in a smooth, level meadow of tall grass, variegated with myriads of wild flowers, including primroses of yellow and crimson, and a lily-shaped blossom of exquisite purple, known as the Ithuriel spear.

The meadow is fringed with groves of pines and spreading oak, and on one side bounded by the everlasting walls. The pines, like those of Washington Territory, are simply height, slenderness, and symmetry. The delicate tracery of the branch is beautiful beyond description; but the trunk is comparatively small. I

procured a photograph of two, wonderfully regular and graceful, and more than 200 feet high, which dwarfed to a child's block-house a large frame-dwelling at their feet. In the evening, illuminated and softened by the full moon, the beauty of the valley was marvellous. The bright lights of the distant house shone through the deep pines, and the river's low gurgling faintly disturbed the air. At times immense boulders, breaking from the summits, rolled down thundering, and filling the valley with their loud reverberations.

The rock mountains are the great feature: indeed they are Yosemite. The nine granite walls which range in altitude from three to six thousand feet, are the most striking examples on the globe of the masonry of Nature.

Their dimensions are so vast that they utterly outrun our ordinary standards of comparison. One might as well be told of a wall, upright like the side of a house, for ten thousand miles, as for two-thirds of one mile.

When we speak of a giant twenty-five feet high, it conveys some definite impression; but to tell of one three thousand feet high, would only bewilder, and convey no meaning whatever. So, at first, these stupendous walls painfully confuse the mind. By degrees, day after day, the sight of them clears it, until, at last, one receives a just impression of their solemn immensity.

Cathedral rocks have two turrets, and look like some Titanic religious pile. Sentinel towers alone, grand and hoary. The South Dome, a mile high, is really a semi

dome. Cleft from top to bottom, one half of it went on the other side of the chasm and disappeared, when the great mountains were rent in twain. The gigantic North Dome is as round and perfect as the cupola of the national capitol. Three Brothers is a triple-pointed mass of solid granite. All these rocks, and scores of lesser ones which would be noticeable anywhere else in the world, exhibit vegetation. Hardy cedars, thrusting roots into imperceptible crevices of their upright sides— apparently growing out of unbroken stone-have braved a thousand years the battle and the breeze.

El Capitan is grandest of all. No tuft of beard shades or fringes its closely shaven face. No tenacious vine ever can fasten its tendrils, to climb that smooth, seamless, stupendous wall. There it will stand, grandeur, massiveness, indestructibility, till the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements melt with fervent heat. Its Indian name is Tu-toch-ah-nu-lah. Both this and the Spanish word signify "the leader; but were applied in the sense of the Supreme Being. It ought to be called Mount Abraham Lincoln.

One noble mountain most appropriately commemorates Thomas Starr King. Another immediately in the rear of Hutchings', our party found nameless, and, excepting only the Speaker himself, unanimously voted to christen it Mount Colfax. Whether the name sticks or not will depend upon future writers. But I am sure it will be perpetual if adhered to by all tourists and journalists friendly to that orphan printer boy of not many years ago, whose industry, talents, and perfect integrity have

won for his early manhood the third place of civil trust and honour in the gift of the American people.

Hutchings' affords a perfect view of Yosemite falls, a mile distant. In April and May, when melting snows swell the stream to a deep torrent, they are grand; but then the valley is half flooded. In late summer their creek shrinks to a skeleton; and they look small because their surroundings are so vast. Niagara itself would dwarf beside the rocks in this valley.

Yet Yosemite is the loftiest waterfall in the world. Think of a cataract, or cascade, of half a mile with only a single break! It is sixteen times higher than Niagara. Twelve Bunker Hill monuments standing upright, one upon another, would barely reach its summits. Ossa upon Pelion becomes a tame and meaningless comparison

We did not climb to the Rapids and foot of the Upper fall; that is difficult, hazardous, and exhausting. Nor did we go to the extreme summit; that requires a circuitous ride of twenty-five miles out of the valley. But we spent much time at the base of the Lower fall, shut in by towering walls of dark granite. The basin abounds in rocks--some as large as a dwelling-housewhich have tumbled down from the top. Spreading my blankets upon one of these, almost under the fall, I found it a smooth bed, though a little damp from the spray; and spent the night there to see the cataract in the varying illuminations and shadows of sunlight, twilight, starlight, and moonlight.

Much of the water turns to mist before reaching the